Blog It Forward – Christoph Menke

Thanks to Markus Theilen I am now also part of the Blog It Forward Community here at SCN. I know Markus since around six years and we did a lot of nice projects together. He made me understand a lot about SAP and I am still embraced about his knowledge and his way of doing stuff in the SAP world.

I was born in northern Germany in the small city Cloppenburg were I also have grown up and went to school. After school I moved to Bremen to study computer science and I totally fell in love with this town and now I can’t imagine living everywhere else.

During my studies at the HS Bremen I had the pleasure to join the lecture about Software Tests of Prof. Spillner. He is a one of the most popular experts in the area of software testing. Afterwards I also had the chance to make my ISTQB Certified Tester – Foundation Level certification. Looking back I have to say, that this was the beginning of my career in the area of software tests. After my studies I joined an company who did SAP development and starts to build up an Quality Assurance team. During my last around six years I worked in several positions. For example I had been the test manager of an off shore test team with four testers in St. Petersburg or I worked as a test engineer and automated the tests of the user interface for the Packstation.

Now my focus is SAP Tests and I am working at a customer as the team lead of the test automation team with eCATT and hopefully soon CBTA. Also I am responsible for the SAP-Test department in our company ANECON where we are currently building up a team to help our customers in the area of SAP testing.

Besides my work I play football at CF Victoria Bremen ’05 in the senior team (older than 32 years) (see the Photo). My club has his 10th anniversary this year and there will a big competition in summer with hopefully around 16 teams. I like drinking to drink a good espresso at the Karton bar in Bremen which friends of mine have opened last December. Also I like to play games on my Playstation or to watch films or series on TV.

And now I like to answer the questions from Markus:

What drives you in your profession?To motivate myself and others I have to see value in the work I do. In the area of software test and there especially in the areas of test planning and test management there are a lot of possibilities to make things better. It is a good feeling if you can help people to find the right solutions or if you can help the project management to relax when you do your job as you should. Also I like the profession as a software tester because it is a job where you need really good social skills. It is important that you know how to criticize (criticize the product, not the people) and that you can find the right compromises for the good of the product and the people.

What would you like to achieve in your life?Work is a big part of our lives, so it is important for me to enjoy the things I do as much as I can. Beside of that I don’t have any more big points on my bucket list. I think it is important to enjoy what you have. During my visit in Tanzania and Uganda in 2008 someone told me that there is a saying in this countries that means :”We make a plan, if we need one”. I think this is a nice way to live. So if I find out, that I would like to achieve something I will have to make a plan J

If you could be a computer game hero, who would you like to be?Best question ever because it makes me think back in my gaming history. Sadly most of the computer game heroes have a really stressing time JI think the most fascinating game character I played yet was Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy 7. I don’t know how many hours I played this game (and never finished it yet).

Is there something in your daily work that drives you crazy?Yes, for sure but fortunately it doesn’t happen often. One of the most frustrating situations are the political ones, which harms the product or the project. As I said before I like to see value in my work. But if you have to fight against wind mills and you don’t have the chance to change something about it this is definitely frustrating.

I like to nominate Mohar Ghosh – which I know about some discussions about CBTA – with this questions:

What is the one thing you are mostly proud about?

Which country would you like to see?

What was the reason for your career decision?

If you were able to meet 3 people for dinner (dead or alive) who would you choose and why?

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I think a lot of us can relate to the worst parts of our jobs being those political parts. Personally, I enjoy a technical challenge (well, except for Smartforms, that is) so those parts of my job are the easy ones.

Besides expresso, do you have any other favorite foods or beverages? What do you find to be the best feature of SCN, if you could name just one?

Beside espresso I like to eat fresh cooked meals and especially soups. Since 12 years I am also vegetarian and I like to test out new receipts as often as I can (there you can also see my profession as a tester).

If I could name just one feature of SCN I like the most it is the forum with its experts. Almost every answer here is very helpful and you feel that the people are really trying to help each other. This is great and also very helpful!

Loved the pictures. I played hours of FF 7, and did finish it! It was such a fun game to lose yourself in. While I played – my son who was very little at the time would watch and call out encouragement. (Then of course I did cheat by looking things up on the internet)